A stalled contract with the U.K. that has been a thorn in Computer Sciences Corp.'s side has also proved to be a valuable marketing tool, allowing the company to share lessons learned with potential customers in the federal government, said CSC's new public sector chief.

David Zolet, president of CSC's North America Public Sector business, remained pretty tight-lipped about the state of the contract with the U.K.'s National Health Service that was halted in September 2011, pointing to legal agreements that barred the company from commenting on current negotiations. But he did note one silver lining from the situation during an interview Monday with the Washington Business Journal.

"The Department of Defense and [Veterans Affairs] are also looking at electronic health records," Zolet noted. "We were able to bring the folks from CSC that had been working on the NHS contract over to the U.S. to spend time talking to clients about lessons learned; what works and what doesn't. It helped [DOD and VA] to frame some of the issues and concerns."

Zolet confirmed that CSC will aggressively pursue opportunities to support efforts by the DOD and VA to combine health records into what will become the world's largest electronic system by 2017, according to officials with the agencies. Last month, they jointly announced the nation's first fully integrated DOD-VA medical facility for treating service members, veterans, military retirees and dependents in North Chicago, Ill.

The departments also reached out to the contracting community recently for information about products that could be used to track laboratory work.

"The NHS program is comparable in size and scale to what [DOD and the VA] are looking to do," Zolet said. "There's an advantage to the fact that we've been through that."

Jill R. Aitoro covers federal contracting.

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